


Love Via Perception Filter

by AndreaLyn



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-16
Updated: 2011-04-16
Packaged: 2017-10-18 04:42:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/185130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Love via perception filter; seeing it only when you pay attention.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Via Perception Filter

  
_My words they don't come out right  
But I'll try to say I'm happy for you_   


*

After nine hundred years of being a renegade, a rogue, a man who disobeys the law and earns himself devoted followers in the process of destruction and the glimpse of a saviour in a pair of Chucks, the Doctor is beginning to understand that there’s more to leaving people than a goodbye and shedding a tear (before the years of regret slowly set into his bones, like an ache too visceral to ignore, a named ache by those he’s left behind). He’s beginning to understand that this incarnation of him shies away from acknowledging the truth before him more than any of the others.

 _Avoidant_ , you might call it.

When _she_ shuts the door and walks out on him, he doesn’t want that to be his last memory of Martha Jones. She _loves_ him. Can’t have that, after all, can’t have emotional connections, not the Doctor, not really, not when there’s a flower that by any other name might smell as sweet. But that’s just a lie too, so carefully spun into the most fragile of forms to protect himself. His hearts are aching and the door is shut and he lets her go. Today, he lets her go.

There will be a tomorrow.

And then all thoughts of tomorrow get splintered when the bloody _Titanic_ goes and wrecks every last repair.

*

  
_And I can't change this  
I can never take it back_   


He watches her in the shadows of a happy house and a family learning to glue the pieces back together. Windows and glimpses into something he hasn’t experienced in centuries and does he even remember familial love? The name _Susan_ gasps past his lips and a hint of it comes rushing back, but it’s gone before he can remember it and his hand touches the cool frame of the window as he watches Martha Jones’ smile light up the room.

She tells a story to her family.

It’s not his story, but she’s gained the capability to speak and have the world at her fingertips, to make people fall in love with her words and for every person out there who loved the Doctor during a year that’s folded in on itself, there must be an equal number who loved Martha Jones for bringing the good news. The Doctor listens to her speak, his attention singular in that moment and no one else exists in the world but him and Martha as she goes on (so sure of her words and it’s so easy to see how she had gained the attention and the respect of the billions of people in the world). It’s so easy to remember why he pursued her, wanted her in the TARDIS and not just one trip, not just two, wanted her to be there because she wanted to be.

Love via perception filter; seeing it only when you pay attention.

*

She comes back to him and the sun isn’t the brightest thing in the galaxy in that moment because the Doctor’s smile is leaps and bounds wider and brighter and more powerful than any gaseous ball could hope to compete with and he picks her up off the ground and spins her around as he buries his face in her neck and smells home; not necessarily his, but hers, and that’s more than enough for him.

She’s come back to his home and that means he’s back at home.

He closes his eyes and presses a kiss to the corner of her lips as he whispers, ‘Welcome home.’ She’s smiling when he steps back, so he keeps grinning. “So, where to first? The Medicis throw a _mean_ ball and there’s nothing like a good party. Not like the French, but it’s something to see…”

end


End file.
